i believe fire opal red coral rising water rising rising moon this is where it is when i am this

“Longing, we say, because desire is fullof endless distances.”

"You are on a rock suspended in a ray of sunlight floating through space. Take a deep breath and relax."

"What goes on inside, is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at a given instant." -David Foster Wallace

"It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there...ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." --Edward Abbey

Your fairy is called Yarrow Elfwand

She is a cheerful sprite.

She lives close to vixen and badger sets.

She is only seen when the seer holds a four-leafed clover.

She dresses in black and white like a badger. She has delicate green wings like a cicada.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

'Freedom is something you assume. Then you wait for someone to try to take it away from you. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.'

Die when I may, I want it said of me to those who know me best that I have always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. -Abraham Lincoln

"All that I serve will die, all my delights,the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,the silent lilies standing in the woods,the woods, the hill, the whole earth, allwill burn in man's evil, or dwindlein its own age. Let the world bring on methe sleep of darkness without stars, so I may knowmy little light taken from me into the seedof the beginning and the end, so I may bowto mystery, and take my stand on the earthlike a tree in a field, passing without hasteor regret toward what will be, my lifea patient willing descent into the grass."-Wendell Berry

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you,If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches are the same to Wren.If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.-David Wagoner

"The five mostbeautifulwords in theEnglish languageare luminous,crucible, melody, undulates, andgratitude."

09 March 2011

its the birthday of Vita Sackville-West, of whom Virginia Woolf said,

"[She is] like an over ripe grape in features, moustached, pouting, will be a little heavy; meanwhile she strides on fine legs, in a well cut skirt, & though embarrassing at breakfast, has a manly good sense & simplicity about her. ... Oh yes, I like her; could tack her on to my equipage for all time; & suppose if life allowed, this might be a friendship of a sort."

"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough."-E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W."At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat." -John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)